I just came back from shopping fuming. I went to Lidl, to buy only a couple of things – of course, I finished with a full bag, as there were some interesting specialty products on offer. I went to the self check-out, and usually I don’t look at the ticket, but I felt that the bill was a little bit more than expected. The price of the ‘italian pomodorini sauce’ got my eye: it was offered at 1.19 CHF, instead of 1.95 CHF normal price. Guess which price was on my ticket: 1.95. I looked then at the bio Burrata, idem; the price on the ticket was 2.95 instead of 2.25 CHF price marked on the shelf. I checked every single of the 7 products that I had bought on offer. All of them had wrong prices. I went bananas. Totally bananas. And yes, I have some type of Asperger, it is what it is.
I went to the cashier, and told her there was a problem with the prices marked on the shelves, vs what it was being charged. The supermarket (saturday mid day) was full. They called someone from the backoffice. Do you think they apologized? Nope. She went one by one to check every item price that I pointed out, on the shelves. She came back to me and asked me what I wanted. I was perplexed - i told her I want my money back. So she took all of the 7 products, and gave me the full money back. How many dozens, hundreds of people will be over-charged today in that supermarket… nobody knows.
I thought you’d want the difference compensated.
yep, that’s what I told her. Particularly after spending 20 minutes there for nothing.
But she took everything – including the ticket . Maybe they don’t want to leave any trace for the complains?
A lurker here. Could it be that those were all Lidl PLUS offers? You would then need to be a member to get the discount.
What new dystopian hell is this?
Lidl Plus:
I think it’s incompetence or stupidity rather than dishonest intention…I might be wrong though.
It happened quite frequently to me in Coop, a few years back. To the point I didn’t buy anything “on sale”…(they would refund me the difference though if I noticed in time and went back with the products, but it was too much trouble already)
Make a complaint to:
- Fédération romande des consommateurs (FRC): Focuses on consumer protection in French-speaking Switzerland.
2. Stiftung für Konsumentenschutz (SKS): Serves German-speaking Switzerland.
3. Associazione consumatrici e consumatori della Svizzera italiana (ACSI): Covers Italian-speaking Switzerland
Yes, that was my first thought too. A quick check does show that some Barilla brand sauces are indeed at 1.19 instead of 1.99 Barilla Basilico sauce | Lidl Suisse although I couldn’t find a burrata on the website.
For those unfamiliar with it these reductions are applied automatically at the checkout when you scan your Lidl Plus card (on your phone app) . I could understand why the manager would only offer a refund rather than applying the discount, but would have thought that the OP would have been made perfectly well aware of why the difference was there.
EDIT: Oops, got that wrong, the chf2.19 was for anyone, the Lidl Plus price was slightly lower at 1.99
They need that as proof for the cancellation. IME when returning an item, e.g. because it’s defective, the customer needs to sign it.
Do you have Lidl Plus? Do you know how this works?
That would be my assumption as well, you only get the special offer prices if you scan your Lidl plus card at the checkout.
@ace @melia you are right! 3 of the products are ‘lidl plus’ 
(not the Bio mozarella, though). Asperger as I am, I will come back monday to take a photo of the shelf price – it should be clear on the shelf, that the offer is with the card.
No, I don’t have a Lidl plus --or a Coop, or Migro, or any card of the type. And yes, I know how they work. Too well. I worked for Tesco, doing CRM-based customer targeting in UK --when the AI systems were not present–, and the things I saw (and did) made me so scared that I sworn they would never have my data!
And, before anybody claims…not, i’m not a conspirationist. I am scientist 
Thanks for reminding me ‘cost’ that my data has. Cost, not value…
It’s probably written with a tiny font, like in Migros “from 2 items”.
I am way worse than that, toxic, self-destructing, carelessly violent…but for managing contracts at my job
No guilt at all if it’s applied to the job, it’s called professionalism. Just be careful to never apply this skill to personal life, because it becomes self-destruction.
I’m curious. What sort of things?
In my experience it’s very clear in Lidl, there’s the full price and next to it the ‘Lidl plus’ price and they’re both the same size with the Lidl plus part clearly visible.
Our local Coop’s speciality is wrongly pricing items.
Passbene scanners and shelf prices often do not tally…
A couple of times recently the coop scanner price was lower than the shelf price. The most recent time I mentioned it to one of the shelf stuffers and they said to just ignore it. I still didn’t feel comfortable so mentioned it to customer service desk on the way out and they were most interested. The noted the item and said thank you. I offered them the 0.40 but they told me to keep it.
I also worked at Tesco on systems processing their Club Card data, and earlier than that at BA on similar systems using data from a co-branded Credit Card. In both cases I found exactly the sort of thing you would expect, data was used for forecasting, for promotions planning, for product and pack geo-analysis, just like other market research data I’d also worked on.
I never encountered anything unethical or dodgy, nothing to make me feel I’d not want my information recorded or used in such ways.
Unlike banking, where possibly the least ethical analysis I ever did was to identify individual customers whose behaviour meant that they would be the least likely to leave if their credit card accounts started charging them, i.e. if an annual fee was introduced, meaning that those with existing debts and a history of struggling to manage their accounts were the most likely to be charged, where those who paid off their cards all the time with no problem would not have the fee applied, as they would simply have turned round and switched banks instead.
Sorry, I digress, just reminded me of stuff I was doing around that time (1990s).
I only buy certain things at COOP.
Periodically, I get sent personalised vouchers to get these products at a discount.
What’s not to like?
If I get vouchers on offers of things I don’t buy, I still won’t buy them.
The Guardian wrote this which I found interesting:
If you have a loyalty card or shop online, the supermarkets will build up a demographic profile of you, and collect data about how loyal you are, what you buy and how much you spend, says Guy Montague-Jones of The Grocer
For example, Sainsbury’s discovered that a cereal brand called Grape-Nuts was worth stocking – despite weak sales – because the shoppers who bought it were extremely loyal to Sainsbury’s and often big spenders.
Having said that, supermarkets can do this without loyalty cards as they just need to map till receipt data with bank card details.
(Although not so easy in Switzerland as many people still feel the need to carry around a few hundred francs in used notes).
Targeted ads is another thing but to be honest, I’d rather have targeted ads on the web than random ones for things I’m never going to buy.